Work: Marxist and Systems-Theoretical Approaches

Stefan Kühl

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367728779
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429627507
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Labour Economics
• Index: Economics

Using Marxist and systems theory as guides, this book offers an entry point to the current debate on the role of economy in modern society, the change in work organizations and the effect of the economy on the individual. It explores the concepts of 'work society', 'industrial society' and 'capitalist society' to explain the conditions of society as a whole, and not just the conditions of businesses, making particular use of the category of 'work'. The first systematic theoretical comparison of Marxism and systems theory, it provides a brief overview of the central debates concerning work society and the controversies surrounding organizations in capitalism. As such, it will appeal to social scientists and social theorists with interests in the sociology of work, industry and organizations.

1 Work—theoretical perspectives

Work is an enigmatic term. Intuitively, one supposes what it means. However, upon closer inspection, it becomes apparent just how difficult it is to determine what can and can’t be defined as work (see already, e.g., Cummings/Srivastva 1977; Ransome 1996). It might be uncontroversial to say that a person ‘works’ when they are remunerated for their activities at a factory, a retirement home or an association. But what if their activities are not remunerated at all? Of course, one wouldn’t say that an entrepreneur managing their own company is not ‘working’; but what if they have someone else manage the company, and the entrepreneur retreats to the position of chairman of the supervisory board? When a paid tutor at a university teaches the intricacies of variance analysis to their fellow students, one would presume that they are ‘working’; but what if they’re performing this service as an act of friendship?

One could simplify things and refer to all human activities as work (regarding the difficulty thereof, see, e.g., Applebaum 1992; Karlsson 2004; Budd 2011). For instance, adults who wrap their kids in diapers, take them to kindergarten or read to them at bedtime would be performing ‘child-rearing work’; cleaning up, grocery shopping and cooking would obviously also count as ‘housework’. The same would go for someone who is politically or artistically active, or someone who is committed to volunteer work; according to this broad definition, they would also be ‘working’. Someone in conversation with their partner would be performing ‘relationship work’, and if feelings are involved, one could speak of additional ‘emotional work’ taking place. Furthermore, one who tries to come to terms with a breakup after failed ‘relationship work’ would be performing ‘mourning work’, just as one who is processing this long after the separation would be performing ‘remembrance work’. Whatever we do, we would be performing work—as long as we are able to make these activities appear as work to ourselves and others (see Liessmann 2000: 86f).

Or one could exclusively attempt to define as work the activities which are understood as a burden. The ‘burdensome character’ of work (Marcuse 1973) would be understood as a feature—if not a central feature—of work. For example, digging in the beds of your allotment garden in your spare time would be considered to be a leisurely activity, but if you’re doing this to ensure your survival as a subsistence farmer, then it would be considered as work. Likewise, if you play with your children, or with those of friends or family, just for fun, this would be seen as a leisurely activity; do this as a kindergarten teacher’s or day-care worker’s burdensome task, it would be seen as work. Ultimately, our relationship to an activity would determine whether it was work or not.

However, the question is still: How exactly can we clarify to ourselves and others that we are working and not simply pursuing pleasure? All attempts to recognize household activities—such as raising children, taking care of family members or preparing meals—as paid work have been unsuccessful. Financial remuneration continues to be the decisive criterion to define something as work (see Waring 1999). Payment signalizes that an activity is of value to someone; in this way, it is possible to negotiate labor power in the same way as commodities and capital.

The possibility and—even more importantly—the necessity to offer and sell one’s own labor power in the labor markets formed itself comprehensively with the emergence of the capitalist economic system (see Polanyi 1977: p. 94). In the transitional period from a feudal society to a capitalist society, there were still various groups for which the provision of remunerated activities in the labor market did not play a central role. Small farmers, homeworkers and artisans who lived on the countryside had various sources that contributed to their livelihood. Indeed, they sold their products and services, but to a considerable extent, they lived from the products that they themselves farmed and manufactured. Similarly, the artisans and wageworkers that lived in the cities would lease a small piece of land and grow food for their own needs in order to maintain partial independence. The small garden allotments that can still be found in many cities today are remnants of these economic survival strategies (see Crouch/Ward 1997; Willes 2014). House personnel, servants and unmarried artisan journeymen generally had no access to such a piece of land. However, as they were integrated in the household of their employers, remunerated work was not of central significance to them either. The most important foundations for their existence were ‘room and board’, which they obtained ‘for free’ from their employers. Remuneration in form of money played a tangential role (see Kocka 1983: p. 40, 1990: p. 109). Vestiges of this originally once widely spread form of work can be found in the case of au pairs, who work for a limited time and are integrated in the household of a family for low remuneration (see Búriková/Miller 2010).

It wasn’t until the establishment of wage labor that work became a commodity quantifiable by money. It became possible to compare under monetary considerations the activities of a soldier with that of a weaver or an agricultural worker. In businesses, it became possible to calculate the cost of labor powers similarly to that of raw material and capitals, and these various cost factors could be correlated as a result. It was possible to calculate whether it was more affordable to execute a task by introducing new automatized production methods or with the extensive application of labor powers. And, quite central—from the moment that work services became quantifiable with dollars, marks or francs—they became negotiable in the markets, similarly to products or capital (for the observational function of markets, see Luhmann 1988a: p. 95).

The last century is characterized by the efforts to have more and more activities recognized as paid labor. The women’s movement in particular stood for the valuing of household, child-rearing and caretaking work through monetary remuneration (seminally, see Oakley 1985, 1990). Conservative circles embraced this idea within a certain scope by demanding that women be paid a so-called ‘stove premium’ if, instead of handing over their children to a day care center, they raised them at home. There were also further considerations to value volunteer, citizen and individual work by remunerating it in some way (see Bungum/Kvande 2013). And the kinds of payment that were considered were not only monetary, but in the form of tax benefits, access to college placement or state services as well (see Beck 1999; Georgeou 2012).

Ultimately, this struggle for recognition by being monetarily valued has resulted in increasingly more activities being subjected to commodification. Commodification, according to the definition of the social sciences, is when more things are valued monetarily and therefore become tradable in the market. Just as works of art (Velthuis 2005), the adoption of children (Zelizer 1985), human sperm and egg cells (Almeling 2007), organs (Healy 2006), educational services (Kühl 2014) or environmental damage (Fourcade 2011) are labeled with price tags, the value of more and more human activities would also be increasingly calculated in dollars, euros or yens (Budd 2011: 43ff.).

It is uncontroversial that the rise of paid work and the correlated emergence of labor markets represent a central feature of modern economy (see Castel 1995). However, one of the core questions of social sciences is how decisive this process of offering and selling of labor power on the market is—not only for the economy but also for modern society as a whole.

The explanation of society over the key category of work

Underneath contemporary sociological analyses—such as those of work society, industrial society, service society or capitalist society—hides the thought that work is the central category needed to explain modern society. With the acknowledgment of such time diagnoses, the idea of using the key category of work to describe not only the relations in companies, administrations or hospitals, but also those in society as a whole became dominant (cf. Offe 1985: 129ff.). This is correlated with the fact that the emergence of sociology as a scientific school of thought coincided with the height of industrialization and the formation of capitalism (cf. Dahrendorf 1962: 7ff.). In this way, the sociologist Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon—active in the late 18th and early 19th centuries—compared the French society with a large factory in “Du système industriel” (1964), one of the very first sociological monographs. His concept of enterprise industriel does not only describe a business; it describes society as well. Herbert Spencer, the evolutionary theorist who lived in the 19th century (1969), described the development from a military to an industrial society in which the businesslike exchange of services would become a commonplace dominant social relationship.

Sociologists had a clear theoretical preference for Marxism for a long time—after all, there is scarcely another theory that bestows work with such significance in the explanation of society. Work, as Friedrich Engels put it (1962: p. 444), is “the primary basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself”. At the latest after the upheavals in the universities in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the majority of sociologists interested in work looked to Marx’s theory of history and society. All paths seemed to lead to Marx, who’d offered a “comprehensive theoretical interpretation at the highest intellectual level of all, which one wanted to research” (Bahrdt 1982: p. 14; see also Strangleman 2016: p. 22). Regarding the key category of ‘work’, the sociologists that looked to Marx had convincing connections to the sociological theory of society, to the theory of business and to theories on the individual. Specifically, as class relation with Marx reflected the relation between capital and work, it was possible to more or less tie with the same theory the entire spectrum of societal relations, the tensions in businesses and the behavior of individuals using the concept of ‘classes’.

However, since the 1990s at least, Marxism seemed to lose ground as a central point of reference for large sections of social science. Whether this quiet retreat from Marx was owed to the general “theory-fatigue” of old sociology warriors, a dissatisfaction with aspects of Marx’s theory or political sobriety in the face of the failure of state socialism, the increasing abstinence of societal theory in large sections of work and industrial sociology, of work science and of economic science, was undeniable. Fundamental papers on the development of capitalist economy seldom serve as exceptions at the moment. New rationalization strategies in companies are described without categorizing profit maximization strategies within the frame of a basic Marxist interpretation. Research on work ethic is hardly ever linked to the once popular research into class consciousness anymore.

The Marxist roots of social scientists who were interested in work reached so deep that most of them dared approach other fundamentally differently structured concepts of societal theory only to a limited extent. Predominantly, the trend seems to be to either use as basis medium-range theories such as micropolitics, principal-agent theory or new institutionalism, or to completely refrain from any theoretical approach. Most sociological analyses are characterized by a conspicuous theoretical modesty. If at all, the theories that are used have an aspiration for explanations which are limited to a fraction of the social field. Salvation is sought in theories that are no longer aimed at society as a whole, but only at a small aspect of ‘the social’. More and more, empirical researchers are stacked together without the increasing knowledge that would lead to the formation of a comprehensive theory (Luhmann 1984: p. 7).

Beyond the limitation of mid-range theories—Marxism and systems theory as grand theories

Against this trend of extensive renunciation of the linkage between work and industrial-sociological research, work and economic scientific research and comprehensive societal theoretical approaches, the focus of this book aims to reconstruct the central debate on work from the perspective of the two grand theories which are particularly interesting at the moment: Marxism and systems theory. The intention here is not to put forward a binding definition of work (see, e.g., Provis 2009; Voß 2010 or Budd 2013 for the difficulties hereof) and subsequently to show how these grand theories work their way into it, but rather to show how these two theories position themselves in regard to the central controversies related to work.

The claim of these two grand theories is their ability to explain not just individual, but all aspects of the social. One speaks of a ‘grand theory’ when the theory is able to explain the stability and change of societies; when they can determine the relationship between economy, politics, law, education, science, religion, mass media and sport; when they can shed light on the functionality of organizations, be they companies, schools, universities, churches or television stations; and when they can explain such elementary social forms as grocery shopping, the exchange of affection at an office party or bullying in the classroom.

There certainly isn’t an existing analysis from the perspective of a grand theory for every single social phenomenon, but it must be fundamentally possible to describe every social phenomenon with its resources. One needs time to navigate such varying subjects as global social inequality, the decline of physical violence in modern cities, the increasing legal equality of women and men in organizations, the priority rules of waiting in line for your turn or the role conflict of talk show hosts from a theoretical perspective. The claim of a grand theory, however, consists of a theoretically consistent—as well as appropriately empirical—description of these different phenomena within their definition; otherwise, it wouldn’t be considered a grand theory.

It is not easy to discern which social science theories are to be understood as mid-range theories and which as grand theories. There are theories—for instance, the rational choice theory—which began as mid-range theories, but went on to develop the claim of being theories for the explanation of all social phenomena. Furthermore, there are theories—for example, the conflict theory of Ralf Dahrendorf (1957) or Randall Collins (2010)—from which, despite containing comprehensive claims to an explanation of modern society, only a highly disputed theory of conflict of interest on a societal level has remained.

And yet, the test with which one can determine the range of a theory is relatively simple: One simply takes a theory which has been successfully used for the analysis of a social phenomenon and applies it to something else. If the theory is not suitable to explain the other social phenomenon, then we are dealing with a ‘mid-range theory’. Quite often, followers of a theory reveal this by aggressively explaining that, for instance, ‘their’ theory of micropolitics, of resource mobilization or of hegemonic masculinity are well suitable to describe some other social phenomena, but others cannot be represented, or only imprecisely.

In order to avoid any misunderstanding: It is impossible to use mid-range theories in a multifaceted manner. To name one example, the theory of new institutionalism can be used to explain why certain management patterns have established themselves in organizations worldwide (see Bromley/Meyer 2015). With practice theory—to name another example—one can easily analyze why a specific habit develops in the upper class (see Bourdieu 1979). However, if one has further-reaching sociotheoretical aspirations, explanations of individual aspects of the social do not suffice; one must instead have the aspiration to explain all aspects of social phenomena.

At the latest since the beginning of the 20th century, there have been two fundamentally different sociotheoretical perspectives in the social sciences: One is more focused on class dominance; the other one on work distribution between societal subsets which are equal in rank. Simply put, while Marxism sees class differences—that is, the differentiation between top and bottom characterized by the relations of productions—as the primary criterion of modern society, systems theory explains society from the tension-laden interaction between societal subsystems such as economy, politics, science and religion.

In light of these considerations, however, one should not overlook the fact that neither does Marxism possess a monopoly over explanations of society on the basis of class antagonism, nor is systems theory the only theory that addresses the interaction between societal function systems. Even if the concept of ‘class’ is primarily associated with the Marxist definition of ownership of means of production, there are other ‘class theories’—for instance, those of Ferdinand Tönnies or Pierre Bourdieu. For Tönnies, the struggle for economic, political and morally intellectual predominance was always a struggle between the classes (Tönnies 2010); and while Bourdieu in no way denies the significance of economic capital for class formation, he considers the significance of cultural and social capital similarly important (Bourdieu 1979). The theory of functional differentiation is identified today with Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory, although its foundation can be traced back to the sociologists Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, active at the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th. Durkheim compares modern societies with higher organisms in which each organ fulfills a special function for the ‘greater whole’. In modern society, there is a formation of ‘organic solidarity’, as the different ‘organs’ are reliant on each other precisely because of their distribution of work (cf. Durkheim 1988: 236ff.). Weber also argues that various ‘value spheres’ such as science, finance, law, politic and art find themselves in conflict with each other (cf. Weber 1990: 536ff.).

The different formations of Marxist theory on the one hand, and systems theory on the other, result in the different observations of phenomena such as the influence of financial lobbies in politics, law or science; the conflicts between work unions and employers; the organization of work in businesses; the cooperative relations between companies, public administrations and universities; and the class identity of the proletariat. Whereas Marx’s theory instruments demand that political, legal or scientific analysis refer to the economic relations and consider the rationale of organizations and individuals in connection to those economic relations, the theory of functional differentiation not only emphasizes the diversity of societal subsets but also focuses on both an organization’s and a person’s own rationale as systems.

The focus on three debates

In the following, I’ll present the three central debates in which Marxist theory delivered well-known templates with its understanding of work, and which are therefore well suited to work out the difference to systems theory. In outdated terminology, one would speak of an analysis on a macro-level of society, the mid-level of the organization and the micro-level of the thinking and acting of the individual (for further usage of this outdated terminology see, e.g., Scott 2001: 83ff.).

The initial focus is set on the reconstruction of whole societal developments. How is the conflict between capital and work regulated legally? Which moderating functions are taken on by politics in this analysis? The classical Marxist theory determines the functionality of law or politics, respectively, from the conditions of production. The economy is not a societal subset among many, but rather the one that has the relevant influence on how society functions as a whole. ‘Capitalism’ therefore not only characterizes the functionality of the financial system but of society in general. Systems theory on the other hand—just as other theories of functional differentiation—emphasizes the distinction of various societal subsets such as politics, law or finance, which carry out important functions for each other without presuming the dominance of one societal subset over another.

A second focus is given to the business as the place where, at least during a high phase of industrialization, the central production processes occur: the organization. The classical Marxist theory understands the structures of cooperation, rule and control in organizations as a part of a conflict between antagonistic camps characterized by objective interests. On the one hand, we have those who have access to external labor power because of their capital; on the other hand, we have those that have nothing to sell but their labor power. Systems theory admits that conflicts occur in organizations between capital owners and workers, yet it maintains that these are often overlapped with other conflicts such as those between different departments, or between different groups of profession; it emphasizes the obstinacy of organizations—of companies, as well as universities, public administrations and hospitals. While in Marxist theory the analysis of organizations is mostly derived from societal production conditions, the o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• 1 Work—theoretical perspectives
• 2 Primacy of economy vs. functional differentiation: the debate on the form of modern society
• 3 Business vs. organization: subsumising the company to the logic of profit maximization or stressing the self-logic of the organization
• 4 Worker consciousness vs. worker essence as a role: class as a binding link between society and the individual
• 5 In favor of a renaissance of grand theories
• References
• Index